<<Print>>A disturbing development picked up by The Herald, indicates that a huge number of service personnel posted by the National Service Secretariat (NSS) to various institutions across the country for their mandatory national service, have been left stranded, after been rejected by the institutions they were posted to.
The NSS is now facing the challenge of reposting them. Shockingly, some state institutions including, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ghana Standard Authority (GSA) among others agencies, are involved in this reprehensible situation. According to the NSS director, nearly 70,000 candidates are available for deployment. Also culpable are private organizations like the Bank of Africa, Accra Brewery Limited and several agencies. Apart from turning away the personnel who were officially posted, some officials are involved in daylight nepotism by submitting the names of their wards, their family members and their friends to the NSS to have them posted to their preferred institutions for their service. The Herald’s information is that, some personnel who reported at their designated places with posting letters were shockingly told by the management to go back, because they had already selected their preferred candidates and submitted their names to the NSS, therefore, there are no vacancies for them.
An enraged lady (name withheld) who spoke with The Herald last week, disclosed how she was posted to Ghana Standard Authority (GSA), but was asked to go back to the NSS to be reposted elsewhere, as there was no vacancy for her. Sources at the NSS head office, have hinted that, some of the organizations are deliberately refusing the personnel simply because they are reserving the space for their children, cronies or children of some high profile individuals, who have been posted outside the capital.
The Herald has gathered that, officials of some of these organizations, who claimed they had recruited their preferred candidates, have actually taken huge sums of monies from the innocent candidates with a promise of getting them do their service at reputable companies. Some were also said to have engaged the services of unscrupulous job recruitment agencies, who have connections with some staff at the NSS secretariat to post them to their preferred institutions. The Acting Executive Director of the NSS, Dr. Michael Kpessah Whyte, who is devastated over the situation, confirmed the report to The Herald, but vowed to resist the demand by these institutions. He revealed the major challenge facing the NSS secretariat as the re-posting of a large number of candidates due to the refusal by some organizations to accommodate the personnel. Lamenting heavily over the issue, the NSS boss, told this reporter in an interview on Monday, that he would not be coerced or bullied to allow this unfairness tradition to continue.
The former presidential staffer and the University of Ghana lecturer was emphatic, he would firmly oppose the list submitted by these institutions without looking at faces. He rhetorically asked “what happens to a poor boy or girl from a village who had completed school and hoping to do the service in the city, but do not have any big man to speak on his or her behalf to get a place in the city. Who will speak for these vulnerable ones, if fortunately he or she got opportunity, yet you reject them…Where should they be posted”? Sounding very furious, Dr. Kpessah warned, “don’t tell us that you want A, B, C or D” at your organization. The NSS director disclosed that, it was for the avoidance of these problems that the Secretariat put in place stringent measures to ensure that people are posted to institutions based on the courses they studied.
He disclosed that, the only two reasons where the NSS can change posting for anyone is; when the person has a serious health problem and adequately prove that with a medical report, and also when the personnel is a nursing mother. The Herald, was reliably informed that stringent measures have been put up at all NSS offices, particularly the head office and regional offices, closing major loopholes previously used to perpetuate fraudulent practices is making some people uncomfortable.
Presently, no direct payment is allowed to pass through a staff of NSS to be transferred into the account of the national secretariat as happened in the past. This paper learnt that, every single payment and registration fees of all the 69, 000 thousand personnel deplored so far, are made directly through the service’s bank account, making the system very transparent.